Nickname: Niko-kun
Sex: Male
Eye Color: Blue
Species: Cat (Felis catus)
Breed: Siamese
Owner: Ayame Aoi
Occupation: Emotional support animal for a LAW wrestler, Ayame Aoi
- Unbeknownst to Ayame, "emotional support animal" is actually Niko-kun's official designation in the LAW records (see the "Past/History" section for more information)
Wrestling Information
Style: Biter/scratcher
Preferred Matches: Standard or submission (no hentai as that would likely constitute bestiality)
Entrance Music
Note: Niko is not an official wrestler in LAW. However, if he ever does unexpectedly find himself in a match, the sound people would probably choose this entrance music on a whim:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH2-TGUlwu4
Characteristics
Appearance
Niko's Halloween costume
Ghost kitty!
Personality
Niko-kun is a very nice and affectionate cat. He is very friendly and affectionate with people, even strangers. He tries his best to comfort and support his owner Ayame.
Moreover, fitting for a cat, he is also very curious and has a habit of escaping Ayame's apartment to go roaming around. However, he will always return to Ayame's apartment at the end of the day.
Niko-kun also possesses a genius-level intellect (for a cat, that is). He is more than capable of navigating the human world, being capable (among other things) of opening doors, using toilets, and understanding the concept of crosswalks. Moreover, he has a level of awareness of human social customs and behaviors that far exceeds that of an ordinary cat.
And yes, he does realize that the "cat in the mirror" is actually himself, demonstrating self-awareness, a trait that is uncommon among animals in the animal kingdom.
Moreover, fitting for a cat, he is also very curious and has a habit of escaping Ayame's apartment to go roaming around. However, he will always return to Ayame's apartment at the end of the day.
Niko-kun also possesses a genius-level intellect (for a cat, that is). He is more than capable of navigating the human world, being capable (among other things) of opening doors, using toilets, and understanding the concept of crosswalks. Moreover, he has a level of awareness of human social customs and behaviors that far exceeds that of an ordinary cat.
And yes, he does realize that the "cat in the mirror" is actually himself, demonstrating self-awareness, a trait that is uncommon among animals in the animal kingdom.
Past/History
Background Information
Niko-kun was the result of a cat breeding program run by a mad cat breeder named Victor Vick. Because Victor was insecure about his intelligence, he sought out to create a hyper-intelligent breed of cats as a way of compensating. Using the Siamese cat as a template, Victor began a selective breeding program that spanned five decades, starting when he was twenty.
Unfortunately, Victor was unable to create cats that were as smart as he had wanted. While his cats were clearly leagues above any other cats in terms of intelligence, they seemingly lacked the levels of intelligence that he was going for. In his observations, the cats did not appear to be able to understand human grammatical structures, nor did they appear to be able to do basic arithmetic. As the years went by, Victor became more and more depressed as his dream of creating a breed of super-intelligent cats appeared to fade away.
In actuality, Victor's cats had exceeded Victor's wildest dreams when it came to intelligence. However, this went unnoticed by Victor as he never bothered to show much affection towards his cats. This resulted in his cats not interacting with Victor very much, allowing their actual intelligence to go unnoticed. In fact, among themselves, Victor's cats had actually developed their own rudimentary language with its own grammatical structure (however, this rudimentary "cat language" rarely made use of meowing; that should not be too surprising as ordinary adult cats usually do not meow at each other, instead reserving their meows for talking to humans). Moreover, Victor's cats formed a sort of social structure/culture than mimicked that of humans. All of this, however, went unnoticed by Victor.
Eventually, when Victor was fifty, he had a daughter named Victoria. Victoria had a relatively normal life and showed an interest in biology from an early age. When Victoria was fifteen, Victor introduced her to his cat breeding project and Victoria began to work alongside her father on the project. Contrary to Victor's cold treatment of the cats, however, Victoria showed love and affection to the cats. This was done without Victor's knowledge as Victor strongly disapproved of treating the cats as anything other than research subjects.
After Victoria had worked on the project for five years, Victor decided to begin letting Victoria take over the project. At this point, Victor was seventy-years old and likely did not have much longer to live. With this newfound responsibility, Victoria had more leeway in how she handled things. Whereas before, Victoria was not allowed to interact with any of the juvenile cats, Victoria was now put in charge of overseeing a single kitten---she was to perform various intelligence tests on the kitten and monitor the kitten's development. That kitten was Niko.
Thus, for the first time in decades, a kitten had received human affection from birth. After receiving human affection, the kitten showcased his advanced intelligence, shocking Victoria. For a while, Victoria kept this a secret from her father; eventually, however, Victoria told her father about the kitten, whom by this point she had named Niko.
Victor was ecstatic about this "hyper-intelligent kitten" and immediately wanted to relentlessly breed Niko to create the next generation (in actuality, the cats had possessed similar levels of intelligence to Niko for years; however, due to Victor's lack of affection, they did not closely interact with Victor so Victor had not noticed this). Victoria knew that if her father had his way, Niko would be locked in a cage and incessantly bred with the female cats.
Horrified at this possibility, Victoria decided to try and save Niko from this fate. While putting the cat up for adoption at an animal shelter would have been the ideal course of action, Victoria would have been unable to do so without being caught by her father. Her father was extremely controlling and kept close tabs on Victoria. Moreover, Victoria did not have access to a car to drive to the shelter with, and Victor kept his car keys locked in a safe so Victoria could not steal them. The nearest animal shelter was a fair distance away so if Victoria had tried to walk to the shelter, the extended absence would have alerted her father. Ultimately, if Victoria was caught by her father, her father would have taken her off the project out of vindictiveness. This would have put the animals under the sole control of Victor, something that Victoria did not want.
Thus, Victoria had no other choice than to release Niko onto the streets in the hopes that he would be found by a loving owner. In the dead of night, Victoria walked a short distance into the city and released Niko, a trip that only took thirty minutes. Then, Victoria made it seem like Niko had escaped from his cage.
Upon finding out about Niko's supposed "escape", Victor was devastated. His hyper-intelligent "super cat", the cat that he had been trying to create for fifty years, had escaped. Upon seeing his dream seemingly fall apart, Victor took his own life. The shotgun that he had used to kill countless cats after they were no longer of use to him had now been used on himself.
After Victor's suicide, Victoria was distraught---part of her blamed herself for her father's suicide. However, Victoria pushed on, wanting to take care of Victor's cats. Under Victoria's leadership, the cats were treated much better, receiving love and affection. Moreover, Victoria applied for and received various research grants to support the project, increasing quality of life for the cats. Additionally, with the grant money, Victoria was able to hire a team of researchers and staff to assist with the project and take care of the cats.
After writing several research papers (Victor kept very detailed research notes so the research had already been mostly done) and gaining major news coverage, Victoria's project continued to grow. To provide further support to the project, Victoria allowed some of the cats to be purchased and adopted by regular citizens (provided they could pay and passed a background check). This new breed of cats became known as "Victorian Siamese" cats.
Unfortunately, Victor was unable to create cats that were as smart as he had wanted. While his cats were clearly leagues above any other cats in terms of intelligence, they seemingly lacked the levels of intelligence that he was going for. In his observations, the cats did not appear to be able to understand human grammatical structures, nor did they appear to be able to do basic arithmetic. As the years went by, Victor became more and more depressed as his dream of creating a breed of super-intelligent cats appeared to fade away.
In actuality, Victor's cats had exceeded Victor's wildest dreams when it came to intelligence. However, this went unnoticed by Victor as he never bothered to show much affection towards his cats. This resulted in his cats not interacting with Victor very much, allowing their actual intelligence to go unnoticed. In fact, among themselves, Victor's cats had actually developed their own rudimentary language with its own grammatical structure (however, this rudimentary "cat language" rarely made use of meowing; that should not be too surprising as ordinary adult cats usually do not meow at each other, instead reserving their meows for talking to humans). Moreover, Victor's cats formed a sort of social structure/culture than mimicked that of humans. All of this, however, went unnoticed by Victor.
Eventually, when Victor was fifty, he had a daughter named Victoria. Victoria had a relatively normal life and showed an interest in biology from an early age. When Victoria was fifteen, Victor introduced her to his cat breeding project and Victoria began to work alongside her father on the project. Contrary to Victor's cold treatment of the cats, however, Victoria showed love and affection to the cats. This was done without Victor's knowledge as Victor strongly disapproved of treating the cats as anything other than research subjects.
After Victoria had worked on the project for five years, Victor decided to begin letting Victoria take over the project. At this point, Victor was seventy-years old and likely did not have much longer to live. With this newfound responsibility, Victoria had more leeway in how she handled things. Whereas before, Victoria was not allowed to interact with any of the juvenile cats, Victoria was now put in charge of overseeing a single kitten---she was to perform various intelligence tests on the kitten and monitor the kitten's development. That kitten was Niko.
Side note: Litter sizes
At this point, the cats' litter sizes had shrunk down to only one or occasionally two kittens per litter (interestingly enough, this paralleled humans as humans usually only have one or two babies at a time).
Side note: Niko's name
Coincidentally, Victoria chose Niko's name in the exact same way that Ayame would later choose Niko's name. Victoria was into Japanese anime so she decided to name the cat "Niko", a name inspired by the Japanese word for cat "neko".
Horrified at this possibility, Victoria decided to try and save Niko from this fate. While putting the cat up for adoption at an animal shelter would have been the ideal course of action, Victoria would have been unable to do so without being caught by her father. Her father was extremely controlling and kept close tabs on Victoria. Moreover, Victoria did not have access to a car to drive to the shelter with, and Victor kept his car keys locked in a safe so Victoria could not steal them. The nearest animal shelter was a fair distance away so if Victoria had tried to walk to the shelter, the extended absence would have alerted her father. Ultimately, if Victoria was caught by her father, her father would have taken her off the project out of vindictiveness. This would have put the animals under the sole control of Victor, something that Victoria did not want.
Thus, Victoria had no other choice than to release Niko onto the streets in the hopes that he would be found by a loving owner. In the dead of night, Victoria walked a short distance into the city and released Niko, a trip that only took thirty minutes. Then, Victoria made it seem like Niko had escaped from his cage.
Upon finding out about Niko's supposed "escape", Victor was devastated. His hyper-intelligent "super cat", the cat that he had been trying to create for fifty years, had escaped. Upon seeing his dream seemingly fall apart, Victor took his own life. The shotgun that he had used to kill countless cats after they were no longer of use to him had now been used on himself.
Side note: the project
Prior to Victor's suicide, only Victor and Victoria had worked on the project. There was no additional help. Additionally, both of them lived in a house that was just outside of a major city. Around the house, just on the outskirts of the property, was a small forest. Inside that forest, there was a structure that housed the cats.
It should also be noted that firing a shotgun in the forest would not alert any nearby neighbors as they were sufficiently far away.
It should also be noted that firing a shotgun in the forest would not alert any nearby neighbors as they were sufficiently far away.
After writing several research papers (Victor kept very detailed research notes so the research had already been mostly done) and gaining major news coverage, Victoria's project continued to grow. To provide further support to the project, Victoria allowed some of the cats to be purchased and adopted by regular citizens (provided they could pay and passed a background check). This new breed of cats became known as "Victorian Siamese" cats.
Shortly after meeting Niko, Ayame joined LAW and was given housing in Tokyo. However, the landlord did not approve of pets and pressured Ayame and her manager Yukina Suzuki to get rid of Niko. Even though nothing in the rules prevented Ayame from having a pet, the pressure from the landlord was still great. Thus, Yukina decided to officially designate Niko as Ayame's "emotional support animal" in the LAW records. Thankfully, this got the landlord to shut up.
Fun Facts
- Niko-kun is not officially an emotional support animal for Ayame Aoi but has been referred to as such by Claire Thomas and Yukina Suzuki
- He is, however, designated as Ayame's "emotional support animal" in the LAW records. Ayame is unaware of this, however.
- It should be noted that Niko-kun's designation as an emotional support animal was not made by a psychologist.
- Both Claire and Yukina have noted that Niko does appear to have a positive effect on Ayame's mental health.
- Niko-kun can do basic arithmetic (even multiplication and division)
- Niko-kun can understand basic human grammar and has a decent vocabulary (for a cat, that is)
Meta Stuff
References/Inspirations
- The name "Victor Vick" was inspired by the name of a rather famous animal abuser. The last name was taken from said person and the name "Victor" was chosen because it was close to "Vick". Furthermore, the name "Victoria" was chosen because it resembles "Victor".
